Adapted from an article in Marketing Management 2004
Is Marketing Ethics an Oxymoron?

Marketers have encouraged and promoted the development of many products and services that have benefited people worldwide. But while they should take pride in their contributions, they should also carefully and thoughtfully consider where they stand on the ethical issues confronting them today and into the future. Noted marketer Philip Kotler examines the ethical challenges in today’s marketplace in a recent article entitled “Wrestling With Ethics.”

He writes that the well-known marketing concept, “give the customer what he wants,” carries an implied corollary: “Don’t judge what the customer wants.” The corollary raises public interest concerns about customers who want something that isn’t good for them (such as tobacco or hard drugs) and about products and services that might not be good for society or other groups (such as guns or large gas guzzling and polluting automobiles).

Although marketers will always seek to expand consumption, there are ways to reduce side effects and engage in limited intervention for the greater good, according to Kotler. Aside from companies’ weak gestures toward self-regulation and the appearance of concern, companies wishing to push their view of the public interest can engage in a range of measures. These can include encouraging companies to make products safer, banning or restricting the sale or use of the product or service, banning or limiting advertising or promotion of the product, increasing “sin” taxes to discourage consumption, public education campaigns, and social marketing campaigns.

Such measures can help marketers become more socially responsible. “The intriguing question is whether socially responsible companies are more profitable,” Kotler says, adding that the correlations between financial performance and social performance are sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes neutral, depending on the study.

He says that even if companies move toward healthier and safer products, they’ll probably continue to push their current “cash cows.” Marketers will then have to decide whether to work for those companies, help reshape their offerings, avoid them altogether, or even work to oppose their offerings.

Despite such conflicts, Kotler reiterates that marketers have a right to be proud of their field. Marketing has played a major role in instigation and diffusion of products such as computers, automobiles, movies, and frozen food. While any of these products can be abused, “they promise and deliver much that is good and valued in modern life,” Kotler says.